ENGLISH CATHEDRAL MUSIC

Compiled by Ruth Shaffer for the November 10^th, 2007 RCS Concert

English Cathedral Music had its origins in the sixteenth century, a time of religious upheavals and bewildering political changes. Caught up in the new experimental attitude of the Renaissance, religious reformers of all nations sought to rethink the purpose and forms of the over-complicated church services. Prior to 1500 the church music in England was not very different from the music sung all over Europe.  Under King Henry VIII (1509-1547) the church in England was separated from Roman Catholicism. With the Act of Uniformity in 1549 time-honored forms of the Latin liturgy were swept away and replaced by the English Prayer Book. The ancient and imaginative ceremonies connected with the major festivals were reduced.  Morning Prayer (Matins) and Evening Prayer (Evensong) replaced the eight offices of the monastic tradition and the Mass was revised as a Communion Service. There was much confusion. The music and tradition with which church musicians were familiar had been destroyed.  The end result of the changes in language and liturgy was the rise of a new body of music, English Cathedral Music, an art form with its own history and tradition.  The principle forms of Anglican music became the Service and the Anthem and a repertory of this class of music has been built up by successive generations of English composers.

With the death of the young Edward VII in 1553 Mary I brought back the Latin rite and submitted to Rome.  In 1558 Mary was succeeded by Elizabeth I who returned to the reform religion and during her reign the Church of England became well entrenched.  Elizabeth desired to accommodate as many as possible of her subjects within the national church and as a result the character of its music varied greatly from Puritan simplicity to elaborate polyphony.  Several notable composers were writing music in both Latin and English.

Many of the cathedrals had trained choirs with endowments to support them.  Large choral foundations had two complete choirs, generally in five parts each, facing each other. The most important was the Chapel Royal consisting of some 32 male singers, 12 boy choristers and at least two organists.   It had much larger forces than any cathedral could boast and was exalted over all other choral foundations during the next 200 years. It was there that the most important developments took place in the production and performance of liturgical music, with Westminster and St. Paul’s taking second and third place. Many of the leading composers were organists of one or more of the three.

Queen Elizabeth encouraged musical elaboration and high ceremony and certain texts called for polyphonic treatment at least on festal occasions. On the other hand, the new theology frowned on the use of music unless it was justified by text, and required simple and clear articulation of the English words, a “modest distinct song.” This was maintained in the psalms and responses, but before and after the unvarying portions of the Service greater freedom was allowed and more elaborate pieces on a wide range of text were performed. Composers searched their Bibles for new and appealing texts on which to write their anthems. The Anthem, which corresponded to the Latin motet, became some of the most creative and characteristic music of the Service. Two types of anthems evolved:  “Cathedral” or “full” anthems for chorus throughout, and “Verse” anthems for one or more accompanied solo voices with brief alternating passages for chorus.

During the Commonwealth era in the mid-seventeenth century the Puritan party gained control. Cathedrals were closed, choirs dismissed, organs mutilated and music books destroyed. Choral services ceased. But with the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 under Charles II, the Anglican Church was brought back, full choral services were resumed, and the Chapel Royal and Cathedral choirs were reestablished.  There was an increased use of orchestral accompaniment with solo voices, trios and quartets as a contrast to the full choir, a sort of miniature cantata. Many verse anthems were produced and music for coronations and special ceremonies became especially elaborate works. 

Parish church choirs scarcely existed before the nineteenth century. The liturgy was spoken and music was limited almost entirely to metrical psalms and hymns. During the nineteenth century cathedral music and church music in general grew to enormous proportions.  The Oxford Movement, which had as its aim reform within the Anglican Church, encouraged a revival of Medieval and Renaissance cathedral music.  It became the fashion in parish churches to hold a musical Service as in the big cathedrals. Soon every church had an organ and maintained some sort of a choir. There was a great demand for a repertory of simpler anthems and services which could be sung by non-professionals. Composers responded by writing anthems that could be used in parish churches as well as cathedrals. Publishers responded by offering cheap printed music in octavo form. Trinity College in London was founded in 1872 for the purpose of training church musicians.

The increasingly secular and materialistic age of the twentieth century witnessed calls for liturgical renewal in the Anglican Church. Much to the consternation of traditionalists, there was more emphasis on congregational singing, as well as folk masses, and music from Nonconformist, non-Christian, non-European and Roman Catholic sources. The Alternative Service Book of 1980 offered choices of language and liturgy; each parish could decide on its own form of worship. But the cathedrals and choral foundations have for the most part remained outside the more drastic changes, and have retained the 1662 Prayer Book liturgy. The Church Music Society and the Royal School of Church Music have as their principal objectives the maintenance and enhancement of the choral tradition. The Friends of Cathedral Music was founded in 1956. The introduction of female singers in a few cathedral choirs prompted a strong reaction, leading to the establishment in 1996 of the Campaign for the Defence of the Traditional Cathedral Choir. It is in the English cathedrals and colleges that the great choral service tradition with its splendid musical past is surviving.

THE COMPOSERS

William Byrd (1543-1623) was the leading English composer of his generation, one of the great masters of the late Renaissance. He was a pupil of Thomas Tallis (1505-1585), an eminent composer and organist at the Chapel Royal. His stubborn Catholicism was the defining feature of his life and works. As a young organist at Lincoln Cathedral his playing was criticized as being too “popish.” He was closely associated with the Jesuits and he and his family were cited for “recusancy” or refusing to attend Church of England services. He published Latin sacred music throughout his lifetime.

Byrd was sworn in as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572 and became joint organist along with Tallis. His compositional energies were directed toward the Latin motet. About half of these seem to have been for use in Catholic residences, since there were few opportunities for public performances. Despite Byrd’s being a Catholic in Protestant England, he was never seriously troubled by the authorities; his loyalty to the Crown was never in doubt. He had powerful patrons, including the queen herself. Elizabeth esteemed him so highly that upon the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 she had him compose an anthem on her own words. In 1575 Byrd and Tallis had received a royal patent for the printing and marketing of music and music paper. Upon Tallis’s death in 1585, Byrd became the sole holder of the monopoly. At the age of 50, Byrd retired from his post at the Chapel royal to a home near the Essex estate of one or his richest patrons, who was known to be harboring a Catholic priest. It is assumed that Byrd and his family joined a community that worshipped throughout the church year and he started to work on music specifically for Catholic services.

He contributed greatly to the developing genre of the English Anthem, including the newer “verse” style with organ accompaniment. He showed himself far in advance if his time by devising a new scheme of alternating the solo voice with a polyphonic section for the whole choir. This would be brought to full development by Purcell a century later. His Cantiones Sacrae of 1589, 1591 and 1611 represent the most significant English contribution to the motet repertory. His publications of smaller scale songs contain a variety of sacred and secular pieces. He also published consort music, keyboard music and lute songs. Line, motif, counterpoint, harmony and texture are brought into play in new combinations. He was the first English composer to employ word illustration. After his death in 1623, it was his Anglican music that survived. Though a Roman Catholic, Byrd wrote five Services and about 60 Anthems for Anglican use. His versatility and genius were outstanding. Byrd’s huge legacy of music, several hundred individual compositions, makes him one of the most brilliant composers in Western history and some consider him the greatest composer of the Renaissance.

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) came from a musical family; his father and three brothers were also musicians. His first training as a church musician began at the age of 12 when he became a chorister at Kings College, Cambridge.  From 1603 until his death in 1625 he was a musician in the Chapel Royal, serving as organist for most of that time. His lifetime corresponded to the highest point in English music. As one of the private musicians in the court of Prince Charles he helped to inaugurate one of the greatest eras in chamber music. In 1622 he became organist at Westminster Abbey, where he presided over the funeral of King James I. While in attendance upon the newly crowned King Charles I with the Chapel Royal, Gibbons died suddenly at Canterbury, and is buried in the cathedral there.

Gibbons was the leading composer of his generation. He produced a large amount of virtuosic keyboard music for secular occasions such as fantasias and dances; ensemble music for viols, violins and wind instruments; and secular vocal music such as madrigals, motets, and English partsongs and consort songs. But as a composer his reputation has traditionally rested on his church music and he is often called the father of Anglican church music.  He left a substantial volume of sacred choral music as well as several Services. Gibbons was a Protestant and wrote only to English texts. His anthems, thoroughly English in spirit, are among the finest in the repertory. He wrote over 40 anthems with only about 15 of them being full anthems. The rest were verse anthems.

His full anthems have attracted particular praise. Hosanna to the Son of David is considered among the greatest religious praise songs of all time.  Gibbons’ treatment suggests a crowd in hurried movement calling out their hosannas independently with unrestrained enthusiasm. He is still regarded as one of the great masters of verse anthems, and a transition between the late Renaissance period of Byrd and the early Baroque of Henry Purcell (1659-1695). His music is still widely admired and his choral music has been a constant part of the English Cathedral repertory.

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) was a native of Dublin, the only son of a prominent Protestant lawyer. He showed aptitude for music at an early age, composing his first piece at the age of eight. His father insisted he receive a general degree before concentrating on a life in music, so in 1870 he matriculated at Queens’s College, Cambridge. In 1873 he was appointed organist at Trinity College and conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society. He also spent a period of time studying in Germany and travelled through Germany and France listening to all the “new” music of Wagner, Brahms, Meyerbeer and Offenbach. As the leader of the Musical Society he conducted many new works and the great neglected choral works of Bach, Purcell and Handel. In 1883 he was appointed as a professor of composition at the newly founded Royal College of Music in London, and four years later Professor of Music at Cambridge. His chief importance is often held to be as a teacher of many English composers of the next generation. Among his students were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Percy Grainger, and John Ireland.

As a composer he worked in almost every musical genre – oratorio, opera, orchestral and chamber music, works for various solo instruments, sacred and secular choral works from the largest to the smallest size and countless arrangements of folk music. There are nearly 200 numbered published works and there may still be some in manuscript form. He helped to spearhead the revival of early Cathedral music and plainchant and greatly influenced the renaissance of English church music in the nineteenth century.  He wrote numerous Services with meaty organ parts, as well as many anthems for the new upsurge of amateur choirs. By organizing large choir festivals he revitalized the oratorio. His voluminous sacred music continues to be the foundation of the Anglican church music tradition.

John Ireland (1879-1962) was born near Manchester, but spent most of his life in London. He entered the Royal College of Music in 1893 at the age of fourteen shortly before losing both parents. For four years he concentrated his attention on the piano, but became increasingly involved in composition and was determined to study under Stanford, which he did from 1897 to 1901. After leaving RCM he made his living mainly as an organist and choirmaster serving at St. Luke’s Chelsea for 22 years. He emerged as a celebrated composer toward the end of World War I when a violin sonata brought him overnight fame. From 1920 to 1939 he taught composition at RCM where one of his pupils was Benjamin Britten. Toward the end of his life he was in failing health and no longer composing, but he lived long enough to see a revival of interest in his music.

Ireland’s compositions span a period of about 50 years. His music belongs to the school of “English Impressionism.” Although brought up on the German classics, while in his twenties he was strongly influenced by the music of Debussy, Ravel and the early works of Stravinsky and Bartok. He evolved a complex harmony style closer to French and Russian models. Like Fauré, he wrote mostly chamber music and songs along with organ and piano works. He wrote neither symphony nor opera, but his piano concerto is considered a classic of twentieth century English music.

He was less well-known for his choral compositions. His only cantata, These Things Shall Be, was written in fulfillment of a BBC commission to mark the coronation of George VI in 1937.  Due to his job at St. Luke’s Church, he also wrote hymns, carols and other sacred choral music; among choirs he is probably best known for the anthem Greater Love Hath No Man, often sung in services that commemorate the victims of war.

(Edward) Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was born into a middle class family from which he received much encouragement. His mother had dreams of his becoming the fourth “B.” He started composing at the age of five and began composition lessons at the age of eleven. In 1930 he entered the Royal College of Music and became a pupil of John Ireland. During the 1930’s he wrote film scores and incidental music and began to make his mark as a composer. Five months before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Britten and his lifelong friend, the famous tenor Peter Pears, travelled to the United States and stayed there for three years. Returning in 1942, they were excused from military service as conscientious objectors, but performed non-combative services by giving recitals all over the country and working for the BBC. All his life Britten suffered with ill health. In 1973 he underwent open heart surgery from which he never fully recovered. He died in 1976 at the age of 63, a few months after being created a life peer – the first composer ever to receive that.

Britten was probably the most prolific and most famous English composer. He was a key figure in the growth of English musical culture in the second half of the twentieth century, and he had an effect on everything from opera to the revitalization of music education. His views on life and music were progressive and anti-authoritarian. His 1961 War Requiem embodied his deepest convictions about love, peace and mankind. In an effort to increase national musical literacy and awareness, he tried to reach out to a wider audience, particularly children (Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra). He loved children and wrote many works for and about them. He contributed significantly to symphonies, chamber and especially choral music, but in particular to opera. In 1945 Peter Grimes debuted to great acclaim and inaugurated not only his succession of dramatic works, but also a new era in English opera.

Britten never served as an organist or choir director in a church. He was not even a churchgoer. Yet he composed some extraordinary choral works that are used in churches, including Missa Brevis, Ceremony of Carols, Hymn to St. Cecilia, Te Deum in C, and Festival Te Deum, which was composed in 1944 and first performed at St. Mark’s, Swindon in 1945.

He was a complete musician. His career as a composer was matched by his ability as a performer. As soloist or accompanist for Pears, it is said he played the piano like an angel. He conducted with vitality, dedication and authority. He was generous in his encouragement of young composers. His success gave him a level of exposure to the media. Publication was no problem and his music was, from early on, recorded shortly after it was written or premiered. He rose to recognition at a time when communications could carry music across boundaries, and his reputation is international.